The Hades Factor

  Like a wary old lion, Haldane repressed his outrage at Tremont’s underhandedness. Instead, he studied his protégé, assessing the potential value of what he had revealed. Grudgingly, Haldane had to agree the profits could be astronomical, and he would see to it that he got his share. At the same time, he tried to detect a flaw, a mistake that could lead to all their downfalls.

  Then Haldane saw it: “The government’s going to want to massproduce your cure. Give it to the world. They’ll take it away from you. National interest.”

  Tremont shook his head. “No. They couldn’t produce the serum unless we gave them the details, and no one else has the production facilities in place. They won’t try to take it anyway. First, because we’ll have enough on hand to do the job. Second, no American government is going to deny us a reasonable profit. That’s the name of the game we preach to the world, isn’t it? This is a capitalist society, and we’re simply practicing good capitalism. Besides, the spin is we’re working around the clock to save humanity, so we deserve our reward. Of course, as I said, we’ve inflated our research costs, but they won’t look too deep. The profits will be stupendous.”

  Haldane grimaced. “So there’s going to be a pandemic. I suppose the only good thing about that is you’ve got the cure. Perhaps not so many lives will be lost.”

  Tremont noted the cynicism that Haldane had used to convince himself to capitulate. As always, Tremont had anticipated Haldane correctly. Now he looked slowly around the chairman’s office as if memorizing every detail.

  He focused on his former mentor again, and his face grew cool and remote. “But to make it all work, I need to be in charge. So at the board meeting tomorrow, you’re going to step down. You’re going to turn the company over to me. I’ll be CEO, chairman of the executive committee, full control. You can stay on as chairman of the board, if you like. You can even have more contact with daily operations than any other board member. But in a year you’ll retire with a very fat separation bonus and pension, and I’ll take over the board, too.”

  Haldane stared. The combative old lion was fraying around the edges. He had not anticipated this, and he was shocked. He had underestimated Tremont. “If I refuse?”

  “You can’t. The patent is in the name of my incorporated group, with me as principal stockholder, and licensed to Blanchard for a large percentage fee. You, by the way, approved that arrangement years ago, so it’s quite legal. But don’t worry. There’ll be plenty for Blanchard, and a big bonus for you. The board and stockholders will be ecstatic at the profits, not to mention the public-relations coup. We’ll be the heroes riding to rescue the world from an apocalyptic disaster worse than the Black Plague.”

  “You keep stressing how much money I’m going to make. In or out. I see no reason to leave. I’ll just run it myself and make sure you are financially rewarded.”

  Tremont chuckled, enjoying the vision of being a savior and making a fortune worthy of Midas at the same time. Then he turned his gaze grimly onto Haldane. “The Hades Project will be a stunning success, the biggest Blanchard has ever had. But even though on paper you approved it all, you really know nothing about it. If you tried to take over, you’d look like a fool at best. At worst, you’d reveal your incompetence. Everyone would suspect you were trying to take credit for my work. At that point, I could get the board and stockholders to kick you out in five minutes.”

  Haldane inhaled sharply. In his most terrifying nightmares, he had never expected this could happen. Events had him in an iron grip, and he had lost control. A sense of helplessness, of being a fish that thrashed inside an impenetrable net, swept over him. He could think of nothing to say. Tremont was right. Only a fool would fight now. Better to play the game and walk away with the loot. As soon as he decided that, he felt better. Not well, but better.

  He shrugged. “Well, let’s go and have dinner, then.”

  Tremont laughed. “That’s the Mercer I know. Cheer up. You’ll be rich and famous.”

  “I’m already rich. I never gave a damn about being famous.”

  “Get used to it. You’re going to like it. Think of all the former presidents you can play golf with.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  4:21 P.M.

  San Francisco, California

  Using Marty Zellerbach’s credit card, Smith and Marty arrived in a rented jet at San Francisco International Airport late Friday afternoon. Worried about Marty’s need to refill his prescription, Smith immediately rented a car, drove them downtown, and found a pharmacy. The druggist called Marty’s Washington doctor at home for authorization, but the doctor insisted on speaking directly with Marty. As Marty talked, Smith listened on an extension.

  The doctor was stiff and strained, and he asked irrelevant questions. Finally he wanted to know whether Colonel Smith was with Marty.

  With a jolt of adrenaline, Smith grabbed the receiver from Marty’s hand and hung up both phones.

  As the pharmacist gave a puzzled frown from behind the glassed-in counter, Smith explained to Marty in a low voice, “Your doctor was trying to hold you here. Probably for the FBI or army intelligence to arrive and arrest me. Maybe for the killers at the bungalow, and we both know what they’d do.”

  Marty’s eyes widened in alarm. “The pharmacist gave the name of his drugstore and said where it was. Now my doctor knows, too!”

  “Right. So does whoever was listening in on the doctor’s end. Let’s go.”

  They rushed out. Marty’s medication was wearing off, and they needed to save the last dose for the morning and the long drive ahead. Marty grumbled and stayed close to Smith. He put up with buying clothes and other necessities, and he grudgingly ate dinner in an Italian restaurant in North Beach that Smith remembered from a brief stint at the Presidio when it was an active army base. But the computer genius was growing more agitated and talkative.

  At nightfall they took a room at the Mission Inn far out on Mission Street. Fog had rolled in, wrapping itself around picturesque lampposts and rising above bay windows.

  Marty noticed none of the area’s charm or the advantages of the small motel. “You can’t possibly subject me to this medieval torture chamber, Jon. Who in heaven’s name would be idiotic enough to want to sleep in such a foul dungeon?” The room smelled of the fog. “We’ll go to the Stanford Court. It’s at least presentable and almost livable.” It was one of San Francisco’s legendary grande dame hotels.

  Smith was amazed. “You’ve stayed there before?”

  “Oh, thousands of times!” Marty said in an enthusiastic exaggeration that warned Smith he was beginning to spin out of control. “That’s where we rented a suite when my father took me to San Francisco. I was enthralled by it. I used to played hide-and-seek in the lobby with the bellmen.”

  “And everyone knew that’s where you stayed in San Francisco?”

  “Of course.”

  “Go there again if you don’t mind our violent friends finding you.”

  Marty instantly flip-flopped. “Oh, dear me. You’re right. They must be in San Francisco by now. Are we safe in this dump?”

  “That’s the idea. It’s out of the way, and I registered under an alias. We’re only here one night.”

  “I don’t plan to sleep a wink.” Marty refused to take off his clothes for bed. “They could attack at any hour. I’m certainly not going to be seen running down the street in my nightshirt with those beasts or the FBI pursuing me.”

  “You’ve got to get a good night’s sleep. It’s a long trip tomorrow.”

  But Marty would hear none of it, and while Smith was shaving and brushing his teeth, he hooked a chair under the knob of the only door. Then he crumpled a newspaper sheet by sheet and arranged the crushed papers in front of the door. “There. Now they can’t sneak in on us. I saw that in a movie. The detective put his pistol on the bedside table, too, so he could reach it quickly. You’ll do that with your Beretta, Jon, right?”

  “If it makes you feel better.” Smith came out of the bath
room, drying his face. “Let’s get to bed.”

  When Smith slid under the covers, Marty lay down fully dressed on the twin. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes wide open. Suddenly he looked to Smith. “Why are we in California?”

  Smith turned off the bedside light. “To meet a man who can help us. He lives in the Sierras near Yosemite.”

  “That’s right. The Sierras. Modoc country! You know the story of Captain Jack and the Lava Beds? He was a brilliant Modoc leader, and the Modocs were put on the same reservation as their arch enemies, the Klamaths.” In the dim room, Marty launched into the excited reverie of his unleashed mind. “In the end, the Modocs killed some whites, so the army came after them with cannon! Maybe ten of them against a whole regiment. And …”

  He related every detail of the injustice done by the army to the innocent Modoc leader. From there he described the saga of Chief Joseph and his Nez Percé in Washington and Idaho and their mad dash for freedom against half the army of the United States. Before he had finished reciting Joseph’s heartrending final speech, his head jerked around toward the door.

  “They’re in the corridor! I hear them! Get your gun, Jon!”

  Smith leaped up, grabbed the Beretta, and tried to speed quietly through the rumpled newspapers, which was impossible. He listened at the door. His heart was thundering.

  He listened for five minutes. “Not a sound. Are you sure you heard something, Marty?”

  “Absolutely. Positively.” His hands flapped in the air. He was sitting upright, his back rigid, his round face quivering.

  Smith crouched, trying to relieve his weary body. He continued to listen for another half hour. People came and went outside. There was conversation and occasional laughter. Finally he shook his head. “Not a thing. Get some sleep.” He moved through the noisy newspapers to his bed.

  Marty was chastened and silent. He lay back. Ten minutes later he enthusiastically began the chronological history of every Indian War since King Philip’s in the 1600s.

  Then he heard steps again. “There’s someone at the door, Jon! Shoot them. Shoot them! Before they break in! Shoot them!”

  Jon sped to the door. But there was no sound beyond it. For Smith, it was the final straw. Marty would be inventing wild dangers and relating more stories about early America all night. He was reaching warp speed, and the longer he was off his medication, the worse it would be for both of them.

  Smith got up again. “Okay, Marty, you’d better take your last dose.” He smiled kindly. “We’ll just have to trust we can get you more when we get to Peter Howell’s place tomorrow. Meanwhile, you’ve got to sleep, and so do I.”

  Marty’s mind buzzed and flashed. Words and images whipped through with incredible speed. He heard Jon’s voice as if at a great distance, almost as if a continent separated them. Then he saw his old friend and the smile. Jon wanted him to take his drug, but everything within him railed against it. He hated to leave this thrilling world where life happened quickly and with great drama.

  “Marty, here’s your medicine.” Jon stood beside him with a glass of water in one hand and the dreaded pill in the other.

  “I’d rather ride a camel across the starry sky and drink blue lemonade. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you like to listen to fairies playing their golden harps? Wouldn’t you rather talk to Newton and Galileo?”

  “Mart? Are you listening? Please take your meds.”

  Marty looked down at Jon, who was crouching in front of him now, his face earnest and worried. He liked Jon for many reasons, none of which seemed relevant now.

  Jon said, “I know you trust me, Marty. You’ve got to believe me when I tell you we let you stay off your medication too long. It’s time for you to come back.”

  Marty spoke in an unhappy rush. “I don’t like the pills. When I take them, I’m not me. I’m not there anymore! I can’t think because there’s no ‘I’ to think!”

  “It’s rough, I know,” Smith said sympathetically. “But we don’t want you to cross the line. When you’re off them too long, you go a little nuts.”

  Marty shook his head angrily. “They tried to teach me how to be ‘normal’ with other people the way they teach someone to play a piano! Memorize normality! ‘Look him in the eye, but don’t stare.’ ‘Put out your hand when it’s a man, but let a woman put out her hand first.’ Imbecilic! I read about a guy who said it just right: ‘We can learn to pretend to act like everyone else, but we really don’t get the point.’ I don’t get the point, Jon. I don’t want to be normal!”

  “I don’t want you to be ‘normal’ either. I like your wildness and brilliance. You wouldn’t be the Marty I know without that. But we’ve got to keep you balanced, too, so you don’t go so far out into the stratosphere we can’t bring you back. After we get to Peter’s tomorrow, you can slide off the pills again.”

  Marty stared. His mind did cartwheels of numbers and algorithms. He craved the freedom of his unfettered thoughts, but he knew Jon was right. He was still in control, but just barely. He did not want to risk dropping off the edge.

  Marty sighed. “Jon, you’re a champ. I apologize. Give me the darn pill.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, both men were sound asleep.

  12:06 A.M., Saturday, October 18

  San Francisco International Airport

  Nadal al-Hassan strode off the DC-10 red-eye from New York into the main concourse. The overweight man in the shabby suit who greeted him had never met him, but there was no one else on the New York flight who fit the description he had been given.

  “You al-Hassan?”

  Al-Hassan eyed the shabby man with distaste. “You are from the detective agency?”

  “You got that right.”

  “What do you have to report?”

  “FBI beat us to the drugstore guy, but all he knows anyways is there was two of ‘em, an’ when they left they took a taxi. We’re checking the cab companies, an’ so’s the local cops and the FBI. Hotels, motels, roomin’ houses, car rentals, an’ other drugstores, too. So far nothin’. An’ the cops an’ FBI ain’t doin’ no better.”

  “I will be at the Hotel Monaco near Union Square. Call me the instant you find anything.”

  “You want us checkin’ all night?”

  “Until you find them, or the police do.”

  The slovenly man shrugged. “It’s your money.”

  Al-Hassan caught a taxi to the newly renovated downtown San Francisco hotel with its small, elegant lobby and dining room decorated to look like a continental city in the 1920s. As soon as he was alone in his room, he phoned New York and reported everything the sloppy man had told him.

  Al-Hassan said, “He cannot use army resources. We are covering all Smith’s and Zellerbach’s friends as well as everyone connected to the virus victims.”

  “Hire another detective agency if you have to,” Victor Tremont ordered from his New York hotel room. “Xavier’s found what this Zellerbach person was doing for him.” He recited the discoveries in Marty’s computer logs. “Apparently, Zellerbach found the Giscours memo, and he uncovered reports about the virus in Iraq. Smith has probably figured out we have the virus, and now he wants to know what we’re going to do with it. He’s no longer a potential threat, he’s a menace!”

  Al-Hassan’s voice was a promise. “Not for much longer.”

  “Keep in touch with Xavier. This Zellerbach person tried to trace the Russell woman’s phone call to me. We expect he’ll try again. Xavier is monitoring Zellerbach’s computer. If he uses it, Xavier will keep him online long enough to initiate a phone trace through our local police in Long Lake.”

  “I will call Washington and give him my cell phone number.”

  “Have you located Bill Griffin?”

  Al-Hassan was quiet, embarrassed. “He has contacted no one since we assigned him to kill Smith.”

  Tremont’s voice cracked like a whip. “You still don’t know where Griffin is? Incredible! How could you lose one of your own people!”

/>   Al-Hassan kept his voice low, respectful. Victor Tremont was one of the few heathens in this godless country he respected, and Tremont was right. He should have kept a closer eye on the ex-FBI man. “We are working to find Griffin. It is a point of pride with me that we find him quickly.”

  Tremont was silent, calming himself. At last he said, “Xavier tells me Martin Zellerbach was also looking for Griffin’s most recent address, obviously for Smith. As you suggested, there is a connection somewhere. Now we have evidence of it.”

  “It is interesting that Bill Griffin has made no attempt to contact or approach Jon Smith. On the other hand, Smith visited Griffin’s ex-wife yesterday in Georgetown.”

  Tremont considered. “Perhaps Griffin is playing both sides. Bill Griffin could turn out to be our most dangerous enemy, or our most useful weapon. Find him!”

  7:00 A.M.

  San Francisco Mission District

  Marty and Smith were awake and checked out by 7:00 A.M. By 8:00 they had driven across San Francisco’s glistening bay and were heading east on I-580. After Lathrop, they crossed to 99 and 120 and headed south through fertile inland farmlands to Merced, where they stopped to eat a late breakfast. Then they turned east again, straight toward Yosemite on 140. The day was cool but sunny, Marty was still calm, and as they reached the higher elevations the sky seemed to grow a translucent blue.

  They climbed steadily to the three-thousand-foot Mid Pines Summit, picked up the rushing Merced River, and entered the park at El Portal. Marty had been watching quietly out the window. As they climbed two thousand feet beside the rapidly falling river and into the famed valley, his gaze continued to drink in the stunning mountain scenery.

  “I think I’ve missed getting out,” he decided. “Indescribably beautiful.”

  “And few people to interfere with the view.”

  “Jon, you know me too well.”

  They drove past the towering stream of Bridal Veil Falls, wreathed in its own rising mists, and the sheer cliffs of El Capitan. In the distance was legendary Half Dome and Yosemite Falls. They turned sharply onto the north fork of the valley drive and continued on Big Oak Flat Road to its junction with high-elevation Tioga Road, which was closed to all traffic from November to May and often far into June. They continued east through patches of snow and the magnificent scenery of the high country of the untamed Sierras. At last they headed down the eastern slope, the land growing drier and less lush.